Quote:
Originally Posted by CalledDownLight
I'm saying that the current system of people paying for college themselves is not broken. The costs of attending different schools are easily verifiable and there are tons of resources out there to help people evaluate which ones make sense. Entrants should weight the pros of more expensive programs vs. the costs and make an educated and rational decision. Furthermore, there are scholarships available for ~every college in the country and also need based aid and scholarships available to those with hardships. All the information to allow people to make informed decisions is there.
The government and public should not be on the hook for people who want to spend 7 years in college or want to get a degree in social media (which is a real thing these days) or a liberal arts field with no practical application. If you want to do that kind of **** then pay for it yourself.
Higher education has basically become a for-profit enterprise across the board when it in theory should be a public service.
Yeah if you as a teenager make an optimal consumer decision, things can work out for you. If you're not sharp enough at age 17 to see that U of Phoenix is a scam, or a degree in art history even from a good university is worth ~nothing despite what your dip**** baby boomer parents tell you, you can pretty much **** yourself over for the next 15+ years of your life.
What reason is there to allow that type of environment to exist? We should be working toward reducing the cost of tuition and reducing the number of useless degree programs out there. Allowing the market to correct itself is basically being done at the expense of unsophisticated consumers, who are often teenagers or first generation college students, collecting huge sums of debt.